


To Say Goodbye

by Matcha



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Blood, Character Death, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, One Shot, Sarah's Death, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 06:59:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3968773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matcha/pseuds/Matcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joel can't leave Sarah there, lying in a ditch with the whole world falling to pieces. He can't leave his baby girl here. So he doesn't.</p><p>The aftermath of Sarah's death, as well as years later. Goodbye is hard to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Say Goodbye

“Baby,” Joel whispers into the damp blonde hair, “baby please don’t do this.” He chokes on the sob building in his throat, his eyes burning with the saltiness of tears. His hands clutch his daughter as he slowly rocks back and forth, smearing blood that isn’t his over the white of her pyjamas.

 “Joel,” Tommy says, his voice unsteady. “Joel we got to go.”

An inhumane sound claws its way through Joel’s throat and mouth, desperate and unhinged. Adrenaline and fear and grief rackets his body, leaving him shaking, as he continues to rock back and forth. Nothing is _processing_ for him. Not Tommy’s words, not the sound of not-too-far gunshots, not the screams of the sick who now tear apart the town. Joel only focuses on his girl, her crying echoing in his ears over and over.

“Joel,” Tommy says quietly, voice urgent and near his ear, a hand now on his shoulder. “We need to move.”

Tommy’s hand is what jolts Joel from his thoughts, from the unmoving child in his arms. He nods. “Okay,” his voice ragged, harsh. “Okay, okay.”

He scoops Sarah up, putting her head over his shoulder and cradling her body close to him, ignoring the warm wet feeling that blooms across his stomach.

“Joel,” Tommy starts.

“Don’t, Tommy.” Joel warns.

Tommy shakes his head. “No – I wouldn’t. Just, if you need help, let me know.”

Joel doesn’t respond, instead he starts walking. Walking towards the highway.

“It’s okay baby,” he whispers. “We’ll get you somewhere safe.” He awkwardly nuzzles Sarah’s face, and nearly breaks feeling the wetness of her tears against his cheek. Her scent of vanilla and honey, her favourite shampoo, was mixed with copper and gunpowder. Her death had ripped _everything_ about his baby away from her. His little girl. His child.

Inhaling deeply he pushes on blindly, not caring where he went as long as it was forward and away.

“Hey, over here.” Tommy’s voice reaches out to him from his left, and he turns. Tommy is waving at him from beside a vehicle – an army jeep of some sort, lights still on and illuminating the highway sprawling before them.

Joel staggers over to the jeep, to Tommy. “Keys?” he asks, knowing the military wouldn’t be so untrained or unorganized as to leave the jeep running.

“I pocketed them off the other guy,” Tommy replies, holding them up.

“Jesus Tommy,” Joel starts, but then quiets. It was forward thinking, and this was not the time to talk about poking around dead bodies. He lifts Sarah up a bit, hoisting her further over his shoulder, so he can get the door open. Slipping into the front seat, he rearranges himself, and closes the door as Tommy climbs in beside him.

“Just drive, far away.” Tommy nods in response, as he puts the jeep in reverse and backs out onto the highway.

They drive. They drive and drive and drive. They go north, and they don’t stop until they stop seeing people and cars. Soon, it’s just fields and trees and flowers. It’s been hours, maybe a whole day, before they pull off to the side of the highway. Dawn is breaking, and the air is filled with the sound of wildlife. They sit in silence, waiting. For what, neither of them are sure, but nothing happens. This isn’t too far from home, and according to the GPS, they are close to what used to be a town. Joel doesn’t know what kind of state it was in now.

Sarah is cold and silent, laying in the back of the jeep. It took everything Tommy has to convince Joel to lay her back there, to let go, and Joel eventually conceded. He looks at the rear view mirror, at her reflection. Sarah looks as if she’s sleeping, and his heart breaks all over again.

Tommy is suddenly at his door, tapping at the window gesturing as if to say _let’s go._

He climbs out, stretching, his bones creaking and back cracking. Joel feels as if he’s aged twenty years in the past day. He shudders as the dried blood on his shirt and skin cracks and pulls at him.

“Here,” Tommy says, thrusting something into Joel’s hand. “It’s not a shovel, but it will do.”

Joel nods, not trusting himself to speak.

They spend the next couple of hours clearing away the vegetation and scooping dirt until they’ve dug a decent sized hole. Sweating heavily, Joel wipes his brow with the back of his hand, smearing dirt and blood across it. Swearing quietly under his breath, he sits at the foot of the soon to be grave, everything overwhelming him. Tommy crouches beside him, silent. Joel is grateful for that.

Joel was grateful for a lot of things before, but now he felt he had very little of what he used to be grateful for. His baby girl, his Sarah, was gone.

The world might be ending, but his had already ended.

Grunting as he stands, he looked into the hole. It’s not pretty. It’s dark and grimy and so opposite of who Sarah was and he hates everything about it. But this is inevitable, as the sun now high above his head tells him rather loudly.

Swearing again softly, his drawl making the word harsher in the silence of the fields and trees, he goes the jeep and opens the back door. He inhales sharply, swallowing the bile the shoots up his throat. He looks away, hand rubbing across his face as he breathes in and out, in and out. He breathes in one last time before pulling her body towards him. She’s cold and stiff, blood caked on everything. He can’t stop the tears that build up, that begin to travel down his face.

Pulling her out fully, Joel cradles her as best he can. He holds her tightly, securely in his arms, as he’s done countless times before. When she’s been sick, or sad, or upset. Anytime she needed him, he was there. Mostly.

Swallowing harshly, he had been there for her, right? When it counted? He had worked a lot, and was away from the house often, but he’d always been there when she needed him. He was at every soccer game, he was at all the parent teacher nights. He’d even gone to those movies she loved, despite thinking they were silly and terribly acted.

Memories were all he had, every moment precious.

Joel lays her softly into the bed of dirt, as if he were laying her onto her bed back at home, as he had done just last night after she had fallen asleep on the couch. He places a gentle kiss on her forehead, and tucks her hair behind her ears. Tommy must have closed her eyes before, because Joel doesn’t have to.

Standing up, he climbs out, and they get to work shoveling the dirt into the grave. Joel’s breathing is laboured, his grief cutting into his lungs as he tries to only focus on shoveling.

He can feel Tommy looking at him, eyes sharp and worried, but he brushes it off. He just keeps shoveling.

Once they’re done, Tommy, ever the handy-man, rigs up a temporary grave marker. A thrown together cross, and the irony of it nearly has Joel laughing. Any shred of belief in any higher power was in tatters now, never to be repaired. But he doesn’t voice his thoughts, and instead thanks his brother.

Joel gathers some of the wildflowers growing in the area. They’re little more than pretty weeds, but she would have loved them, he knows. Yellow and purple and white, bright and cheerful. He lays them there, at the small cross, at the small grave.

He silently gives his eulogy, his emotions fueling him as he cries with his brother. They let as much as they can out, before they have to keep moving. Before the sun sets. Before someone or something finds them.

Silence is what accompanies them next, a harsh reminder of the sunshine that they both grieved over.

\--

_Eighteen Years Later_

Tommy looks at the tattered map, aged yellow and worn nearly to the point of being illegible. Tommy knows it well enough that it doesn’t matter, he’s stared at it enough, stared at the black x in the mid right of it.

He was almost there, but he still had a ways to go. It would have been faster had he been in a car, but these days it was more sensible to go on horseback. He pats the neck of his cinnamon and honey horse, who whinnies softly in reply.

Three more miles down the road, and he’s there. Wild grasses, weeds, and tall grasses cover the ground, filling the field and invading into the wooded area just ahead. He waits, and listens. Listens for the unnatural rustling of the grass, the inhuman screeches of the infected, the soft clicking of those blinded by the fungus that has invaded their body. Nothing but the sound of the wind traveling through the trees and plants.

He sighs, as he dismounts from the horse, grabbing the lead and pulling him to the side of the highway. He starts clearing away the grass and weeds and bushes that have grown the past eighteen years, walking around the area slowly, his keen eyes looking for the small cross he had built so long ago.

He nearly misses it, the grass had become so tall and wild, but here it is. Tommy starts pulling everything he can, taking out his machete and slicing away the thickest of the vegetation. He pulls and cuts and cleans the small grave site, until it resembles what it looked like when he and Joel had first dug it at the start of all this madness.

With the area clear, he returns to his horse, pulling a few items out of the saddlebag. He returns to the grave quickly, and starts working. Tommy removes the wooden cross, which had surprisingly weathered well against time – rotted, and falling apart, but it was still standing until now. He fashions a better grave marker, with better materials brought from the city.

Despite the many deaths that occurred, not many people could afford the time and effort, and risk the danger involved with burying the dead.

Tommy picks up his small hammer, and pounds the cross firmly into the ground. He pulls a small picture, framed to keep out the rain and the snow, and places it on the cross. He stands up with a groan, his back sore and aching. He pats the cross and returns to his horse, glancing back one more time before he mounts and sets off.

\--

_Seven Years Later_

“So,” Ellie says after a period of relative silence, “you do know where you’re going, right?”

“Yes, Ellie.” The groan in Joel’s voice is all but subtle. “I know where we’re going.”

She laughs, pulling up beside him and his horse. Her voice has deepened slightly, but Ellie’s demeanour was more carefree than ever, since they had started this dangerous road trip. Joel had told her not to come, but Ellie has her ways and here she was.

Joel suddenly stops, Ellie trotting ahead of him before turning around quickly to rejoin him.

“We’re here,” he says quietly, his voice rough. He dismounts and Ellie follows him, as they walk towards the edge of the cracked asphalt. The area has become overgrown again, but less so than the surrounding area, making the cross visible from where they stood.  

Joel starts clearing the area, Ellie soon joins him, plucking at the various weeds. Once they finish, and the grave is once more clear, they stand together in silence.

Ellie crouches, and stares at the picture in front of her. It shows the cheerful blonde teenager at a party – her’s most likely.

“Nice to meet you Sarah,” Ellie says quietly, and Joel looks at her surprised. It fades quickly, and she feels a hand on her head as Joel pats it gently. Joel remains silent, as he sits beside Ellie.

They sit together for a long time, until the sun starts to set. They don’t need words at first, but soon Joel starts talking about Sarah, the most he ever has since he met Ellie. It feels right, at this moment, to share, and share he does until they are traveling down the highway.

“Thanks, Joel.” Ellie says, knowing this couldn’t have been an easy thing to do.

Joel nods, and Ellie is pretty sure she hears, “Thank _you_ Ellie.” She smiles.

It was time to go home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I started playing The Last of Us for the fourth time, and was struck by a thought - that Joel wouldn't leave Sarah there even as the world went to shit - and it wouldn't leave me. I fleshed it out a bit more, and here I am, making friends cry. 
> 
> Not my usual fare, but when the plot bunny bites, sometimes I am forced to listen. 
> 
> I apologize for any wonkiness, this isn't beta-ed and I wrote it in the wee hours of the morning (it was that powerful!)


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